


day 14: astronomy in reverse (it was me who was discovered)

by halfwheeze



Series: thirty ways to wreck a train [14]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: It's an AU, M/M, but that's just how it be, it's not a very specific au, that's all that matters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 07:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14075934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: plotting the stars, ryan meets someone new.





	day 14: astronomy in reverse (it was me who was discovered)

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is day fourteen of a 30-day series I'm trying out! I can't say that I'll be fantastic at it, but I'm gonna try!
> 
> day fourteen is stargazing! hope you enjoy!
> 
> sorry that this one is a little late; i was watching Love, Simon!

It’s a little old school because you  _ can _ just google it, but he wants to do it by hand so, Ryan Bergara is making a star chart. There’s a park like a hundred miles outside of LA that’s perfect for stargazing, and he loves the place so much that he could stake out and live there, but he just brings his telescope every couple of weekends instead. He’s plotting Orion when a body sits down next to him, but they’re just sitting, so he’s not  _ that  _ worried about it. It can wait until he finishes marking down Orion’s dagger anyway, placing them in a vertical row just beneath the diagonal of Orion’s belt. The third star is off, so he erases it and does it again before marking what he supposes is Orion’s feet, though he’s never thought about it before. Only then does he look over. 

If he hadn’t gone through a music phase in freshman year of college, he wouldn’t know who this guy was. In the light of the full moon, Ryan knows exactly who it is: disgraced former pianist Shane Madej, a drop out from Julliard. Ryan stopped following his career after he dropped out, and it’s a wonder that Madej is on the west coast at all; he knows the guy lived on the east coast his whole life. A fallen star sits next to him while Ryan is looking at stars that fall before we even know they’re there; it’s a bit poetic, in a sense. Ryan shakes himself of it when he stops looking through his telescope, looking instead at Shane Madej, eyebrow raised in prepared question. 

“Hey,” Shane says, casual and exactly like nothing is happening out of the ordinary and he isn’t with a complete stranger in the dead darkness of night. Ryan nods his head like this is a normal occurrence, just looking back through his telescope and paying Shane no more mind. When he finishes plotting Pollux and Castor, he sets down his pen again, deciding to lay back rather than continuing to look into the cosmos; it’s beginning to make his head hurt. Shane Madej lays down beside him, and suddenly he has to ask. 

“Not to be nosy, but is there any reason you’re on my blanket?” Ryan asks, still keeping their air of unceremonious discussion of something that has to be weird. This cannot happen to other people. 

“Wandering the park. Looked fun. Bad impulse control. You mind?” Shane explains, ending with a consent question after he’s already been here for like five minutes. Ryan shrugs and keeps his eyes on the stars, not speaking again until another question occurs to him, making itself unbearable not to know rather quickly. 

“Why were you wandering the park?” he asks, looking into the endless night instead of at the former pianist. 

“It’s what I do when I can’t sleep. I’ve gotten pretty familiar with the terrain,” Shane replies, laughter and self deprecation creeping into his casual tone and turning it into something else. Ryan gives a huff of a laugh, only barely avoiding snorting because he’s a trash human who can’t do amusement right. 

“I only come out here to do my star chart when I’m already not sleeping, so I can dig it,” he says eventually, a little late for normal conversation. Shane turns a little in interest, though Ryan only sees it out of the corner of his eye. He does not look back at Shane in return. He doesn’t know why. 

“Why can’t  _ you  _ sleep? If you don’t mind telling a complete stranger,” Shane asks, sardonic smile in place and little bit of laughter settling in again. Ryan thinks he would like to hear Shane’s laughter in a more genuine form, maybe. 

“Scared of everything, you know? I just get so inside of my own head that I have to get out of my apartment or it feels like I’ll explode. What’s yours?” Ryan gives Shane, which is more than he’s ever given anyone else about what he knows is his anxiety, even if he won’t go to therapy for it. Shane nods and looks up at the stars again, and Ryan almost misses the weight of his gaze against his skin. 

“I think I’m lonely, which is crazy, because I left the east coast to be alone. I should be happy, but I just miss my mom and dad. Otherwise, I don’t know. Sleeping kinda makes me feel like I’m not getting anything done, just wasting time for anywhere between four and ten hours,” Shane explains in return, shrugging. 

“Is that why you decided to sit down? Cause you’re lonely?” Ryan asks, curiously and tactlessly and without regret. It startles a laugh out of Shane, which almost makes it worth it even without an answer of any real kind. 

“Yeah, I, uh, I guess it is. I’m Shane, by the way, Shane Madej,” Shane introduces himself awkwardly between little huffs of leftover laughter, and Ryan feels a little accomplished with himself. 

“Ryan Bergara,” Ryan introduces, not adding anything else because Shane didn’t. He doesn’t know what else they’re going to talk about. He wants to keep talking to Shane, but Ryan is a little painfully awkward, and talking to others when he’s feeling such a way is hard. 

“That’s an interesting name. Has character,” Shane says, which is a weird thing to say, but it leaves  _ such _ a window. 

“You should hear my phone number. It has an entire plotline,” Ryan jokes, startling another genuine laugh out of Shane. Yeah, he could get used to a sound like that. 

“I’d love to hear your phone number. You wanna get coffee sometime, maybe?” Shane asks, forward and funny and Ryan laughs, but nods. It breaks the ice and gets them talking, distracted. They exchanged phone numbers and stories and they don’t realise that they’re outside for a long time until the sun is coming up, and only then do they mutually realise how tired they’ve become. Shane smiles and bumps his shoulder with his own when they stand, helping Ryan collect all of his things together. 

“You want to go for that coffee now, maybe?” 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a prompt @halfwheeze on tumblr, and I'll get to it when I can!


End file.
